Surveying GenAI-based Automation in Printed Circuit Board Design and Test
For researchers and practitioners in PCB design and test, this survey provides a structured overview of GenAI applications and challenges, though it is a literature review with no novel results.
This survey examines the use of generative AI across the printed circuit board (PCB) design life cycle, including supply chains, specification, circuit design, layout, validation, test, and assembly. It identifies key challenges such as data scarcity and limited tool integration, and highlights many remaining opportunities for GenAI integration.
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly used for applications in the hardware and software domains. It purports to reduce the manual effort involved in the development and testing of complex systems before release. Within the hardware space, most tasks have focused on design automation of integrated circuits, particularly with hardware description languages. However, other types of hardware also exist! In this survey, we instead examine how GenAI has been and is being across the printed circuit board (PCB) design life cycle. This includes everything from supply chains, system specification, circuit design, layout and optimisation, validation and test, and PCB assembly and distribution. Through this lens we present a taxonomy of discovered works, categorising them according to their intent and contributions. This survey also identifies key technical challenges that GenAI faces in this space, such as domain-specific data scarcity and limited support for integration with existing PCB tools. Finally, future research directions are discussed: our survey shows that there are many opportunities remaining when considering how GenAI may be integrated into various tasks in PCB design and test.